Tale of the Tape: How The Stone Roses created a timeless debut album
There are some records I slide to my friends with nothing more than a wry smile and one sentence up my sleeve. “All killer no filler” is an unflinching mission statement that lets the recipient know that every single track on this record requires your full attention.
Now, I use this phrase with delicacy. It’s not wilfully thrown around to describe albums that I’ve definitely enjoyed. No, it’s saved for records that quite simply do not have a bad track on it. That is the key differentiator, the fact that not one song on the tracklisting could be spared for the removal of any of them would disrupt the entire journey of the listen.
One album that undoubtedly fits that mould is The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album. Delivered at the pinch point of British culture in 1989, it was a triumph of alternative music that captured the exciting atmosphere of the Madchester movement in one succinct record.
From the suspenseful opening of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ to the textural joy of ‘Fools Gold’, which to this day remains a track that continues to blow my mind, and consistency fills dancefloors no matter where it is played. It’s a record of pure class, where innovative arrangements and beautiful songwriting collide.
Producer John Leckie recalled, “I get so engrossed in recording that I never project in terms of an audience or the impact a record will make; you just want to make something that you’d listen to at home. We always knew ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ would start and ‘I Am The Resurrection’ would end it, but once we had the whole running order we realised, ‘Fuck, that’s good’.”
There was something about the record that felt natural and effortless. There was a consistency to the arrangement of each track that they managed to bleed seamlessly through one another and almost pull the wool over your eyes, making you forget that these are technically accomplished pieces of music being made.
In fact, ‘I Am The Resurrection’ is a song that just goes to prove how effortlessly talented the band were, for it was all derived from a Beatles-like approach to songwriting. “Mani would play the riff backwards during sound-checks and we played along over the top for a laugh,” drummer Reni recalled.
Adding, “Finally, we said, Let’s do this joke song properly and see what happens.”
The fact that the record sounds like a catalogue of esoteric ideas, finely crafted into one record where the musicianship is absolutely air-tight, is because, in some form or another, these songs existed for years. Whether it was Mani playing bass in reverse during soundchecks, or just as demos, dating back to 1985 when ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ and ‘This Is The One’ were first recorded, they were ideas that had infected the brains of each band member, and were ready to be aided by a fully fledged recording session.
Then, in the second half of 1988, they got their chance in the iconic Welsh recording venue, Rockfield Studios. Paul McCartney’s 1970 solo album, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and later Oasis’ sophomore album would all be recorded there, a venue that’s ready to see innovative ideas being laid down fully.
It’s no wonder that it’s a record oozing with clarity and confidence, and has long lived in the hearts of music fans ever since. While it may not be the commercial monster some other records of that era were, hitting number 32 on the national charts on May 13th, 1989, and only climbing to the heights of fifth place in 2009, for its 20th anniversary, it’s achieved something more important than that.
It’s woven itself into the fabric of musical culture and defied the odds continuously by sounding like a record that comfortably fits in any genre it moves through. No matter the year, no matter the place, The Stone Roses will always sound like a deeply relevant and pioneering record.
